A Kathiawar’s Wail – Mahatma Gandhi

[Prof. Dr. Yogendra Yadav]

Prof. Dr. Yogendra Yadav

Senior Gandhian Scholar, Professor, Editor and Linguist

Gandhi International Study and Research Institute, Jalgaon, Maharashtra, India

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A Kathiawar’s Wail – Mahatma Gandhi

 

The Kathiawari friend in question has an undoubted right to write to me as he has done, just as it is my duty to give a patient hearing to what the youth might have to say. Every duty performed confers upon one certain right, whilst the exercise of every right carries with it certain corresponding obligations. And so the never-ending cycle of duty and right goes ceaselessly on. In the present case for instance the Kathiawari youth began by exercising his right to pour forth his grief to me. I discharge my duty by giving him a patient hearing, with the result that the right to speak out my mind to the Kathiawari youth has now accrued to me, and it is the duty of the Kathiawari youth in question to hear and try inwardly to digest and assimilate what I might have to say. I very well remember the promise I made at Bhavnagar.

I have not yet lost hope. My efforts still continue, but their result is not in my hands, but in the hands of God who alone controls results. Nor is it necessary that my efforts in this direction should be before the public or involve my personally meeting the rulers in question. They may or may not even be direct; indeed they may begin and end with a heartfelt prayer. Let no one laugh at this. I want to enter into no special pleading on my behalf. I mention this method of work because it is part and parcel of my life.

For years together in South Africa my efforts consisted practically only in waiting and prayer, and it is my firm conviction that that period of silent prayer was the most fruitful for that work. It constituted the bedrock on which whatever little was accomplished was based. Even today, perhaps I may be said to be doing nothing tangible for the attainment of Hindu-Muslim unity, yet it is my claim that I am striving for it ceaselessly. Even so in the matter of the Indian States, I am always on the look-out for an opportunity. Opportunities have always come to me for the waiting and praying. Let no one therefore be led away to think that I have ceased to concern myself about the question of the Indian States or to do anything in that behalf. But I know that the impatient reader can judge my efforts only in the light of concrete tangible results. He may therefore well feel angry if he fails to understand my way of doing things.

I must hold my soul in patience. I may not here enter into a discussion of Mansukhlal restrictions. My opinion in that respect has not undergone the least change. But circumstances alter cases. I have simply laid down the indispensable conditions for the holding of conferences in the Indian States. If such conferences must be held at all without observing these restrictions, I maintain that it is not possible as yet to hold conferences within the boundaries of the States. But these restrictions apply to conferences only; they do not affect individual action. Anyone in his individual capacity has always perfect liberty to criticize as much as he likes any Indian prince, subject only to the measures of his own strength and consideration of sobriety and common sense. Again I have never suggested that individual rulers of Indian States may never be criticized or that conferences untrammeled by any restrictions may not be held at all. On the contrary I hold that there is nothing improper in holding in British territory conferences at which individual States may be freely criticized.

There is also the undoubted right of the subjects of any State to criticize the administration of that State within its own border. That this right is not fully exercised today is a matter of deep sorrow. It is true that personally I do not through Navajivan or otherwise criticize individual rulers. But that is a different matter altogether. I claim to be a practical man. I have got a fair measure of my strength and I know how to conserve it. I have deliberately cultivated the habit of avoiding a useless or superfluous word. I do not hesitate unsparingly to denounce all wrongs great and small in British territory because I know that such denunciation is backed by consciousness of potential strength. In the case of the States, though I am not unaware of the terrible things going on in some of them, I have no strength to back my exposure of the wrongs. I disclaim any undue partiality for the States. At the same time I owe them no grudge; I do not desire their destruction. There is an abundant scope for reform in them which it should not be impossible to effect today. But it is my firm belief that it is impossible to reform the States in the true sense while India is in bondage. It may be possible to obtain redress here and there in cases of flagrant injustice by leading a crusade against it. But such tinkering does not interest me. It gives me no satisfaction. I am therefore today concentrating all my energy on the root evil. If I can effectively touch the root, the branches will in time drop down of their own accord whereas on the contrary to divert public attention from the root evil and mobilize it against the branch evils in the States would mean lending an additional lease of life to the former. That is a risk that I for one am not prepared to run. Let no one; however, understand me to mean from this that no action whatsoever is at present possible in the case of the States.

I shall repeat here what I have already said. Wherever the subjects of States are ready for it they can and ought to organize an agitation against maladministration in that State especially if they have the strength to make use of the never-failing weapon of Satyagraha. But it is a matter of deep sorrow to me that today the ruled are often tools in the hands of wicked rulers. Grinding oppression has rendered the people nerveless. No one has yet been able to save goats from the clutches of tigers. The goats’ emancipation would be possible only if one could envisage the goat world itself giving birth to its would-be emancipator. Though reduced to the position of the goat man is today in this country, especially in the States, all hope is not lost for him. He belongs to a higher species. Strength lies dormant in the weak. If they find an environment in which bipeds exactly like them exhibit strength, it is not unlikely that they will catch the infection. Bardoli was only a modest forerunner…a beam from the powerful sun. If Bardoli exhibited the full strength and qualifications necessary for full Satyagraha, its example would spread throughout the length and breadth of the land, and we should find ourselves, including the people of the States, a free nation.

 

Reference:

Young India, 29-8-1929